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Hoteliers find answers and revenue potential in technology

Hoteliers find answers and revenue potential in technology

The world has experienced some bizarre, and yes, unprecedented times in a short, but monumental, few years.

The hospitality and travel industries, (among the rest of the world) have heard the continuous talk about “the new normal.” But for hoteliers, the only thing proving to be normal is that nearly everything about guest services is new.

Today’s guests want risk-free contingencies, self-service, and contactless support. Meaning hoteliers need innovative ways to manage volume, promptly communicate, and provide exceptional guest experiences, all while facing a labor shortage.

If hoteliers, and the hospitality industry, plan to welcome the volume of group travel then technology will be paramount to not only their survival but also, revenue potential.

 

Progression in the industry presents major challenges for hoteliers.

The past two years changed the way we think about travel and proved just how special exploration can be.

With summer travel fading, the preparation for the 2022 holiday travel season begins. And according to data, this year has already shown a significant rise in group travel booking rates. Most observers attribute this surge in business to pent-up demand from consumers who have been hunkered down at home or recovering financially.

Alliances between hotels and innovative software are helping to broaden reach, secure bookings and open revenue opportunities without additional staff resources. Hoteliers with the capabilities to collect insight into guest profiles, especially those belonging to a group, are better positioned and equipped to manage the volume of bookings and grow new revenue streams without their usual staff size.

 

As group travel continues to grow, group sizes are trying to catch up.

The practice of social distancing for such an extended amount of time left certain pandemic-related behaviors lingering in the business of group travel. For instance, the number of events and gatherings has increased while the actual group size has yet to reach pre-pandemic levels.

In 2022, 63% of event RFPs were for groups of 50 people or less (up 5% from 2019), which has created an additional struggle for hoteliers who’ve experienced less time to plan for group accommodations.

However, the largest struggle of all is adapting to the combination of a higher volume of smaller groups and events in less time with reduced staff.

 

The hospitality industry is currently face-to-face with a labor crisis.

According to the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA), 87% of hotels reported being forced to lay off or furlough staff because of COVID-19.

As of June 2022, only 36% have been unable to bring any of their furloughed or laid-off workers back to full-time employment. Meanwhile, 97% of surveyed respondents said they are experiencing a staffing shortage today.

To meet the demand of travelers, hotels have offered an array of staff incentives, like:

    • 90% have increased wages
    • 71% are offering greater flexibility with hours
    • 43% have expanded benefits

Unfortunately, over the past year, hoteliers’ attempts to manage labor shortages were met unsuccessfully and led to unsustainable labor costs without alleviating their workforce crisis.

So how does a hotelier meet their guest’s exceedingly high expectations with fewer employees?

Technology.

If hoteliers plan to welcome the volume of group travel then technology will be paramount to not only their survival but also, revenue potential.

Embracing technology in unprecedented ways provides a solution to labor shortages.

The use of tech is one of the few realistic ways to lessen the negative impact of the current labor shortages and unsustainable labor costs. Not only can software solutions reduce staffing needs by a significant percentage, but it also satisfies today’s tech-savvy guests and augments their experience in planning group travel.

According to the 2022 Hotelier Technology Sentiment Report, the adoption of contactless technology increased by 66% during the pandemic. In the last two years, hotels have continued to spend 31% more on technology.

While the volume of group travel is expected to continue rising, further data reveals that significant changes will persist. This includes the average lead-in time for an RFP, which has already been shortened by 30 days. Hoteliers have combated the issue of shorter timeframes by placing more capabilities into their guests’ hands.

Digital technology for room block management as an example, allows fewer people to manage more. It offers a resolution for accommodating groups in less time by administering live updates on room blocks, reservation changes, and upsell opportunities. With data always available, attrition concerns become more actionable ahead of time.

Having one operating tool that digitizes a process has become the normal guest expectation, but it also offers convenient advantages to hoteliers, employees, planners, and guests alike.

Given the challenges of today, incorporating technology into hotel operations is necessary to minimize human error, maximize efficiency and improve the guest experience.

Not only can software solutions reduce staffing needs, but it also satisfies today’s tech-savvy guests and augments their experience in planning group travel.

Industry technology is a business opportunity to enhance the guest experience.

Five-star service means something different to every customer now, but having the capabilities to individualize each service, for each group, and for every guest, makes the experience personal.

With prompt communication and group-activity tracking, hoteliers can follow the pace of group bookings. These real-time insights help to understand your customers and prepare for ways to personalize their experience. Technology gives a hotelier the opportunity to approach each booking with a plan to customize guest services more than ever before.

Integrated systems allow you to know more about each reservation so you can do more for each guest. Communication and preparation will be key to winning business in the future of group travel with real-time data playing a central role in successfully improving relationships and building positive guest experiences for all the return visits to come.

Experiences matter: Giving more value with offers & incentives create major potential for hoteliers

Experiences matter: Giving more value with offers & incentives create major potential for hoteliers

From the shadows of the Great Depression to more than 15 million educated students in debt, the generational saving vs spending tug-of-war taught us that material things can be taken away. The economic shifts have tended to culturally shift perspectives as well as our spending habits.

However, acquiring things appears to no longer dictate class or status—at least, not like it used to. Although our lifestyle is largely impacted by what we can afford, we’ve decided it serves us better to ask, “What does this afford me?”

Nearly 1/3 of Americans now prioritize experiences over products—providing clear advantages for hoteliers.

Research shows the shift from buying material things to procuring experiences due to a higher perceived value. Buying habits demonstrate less concern with the status quo and less commitment to big purchases because they feel more like limiting factors in life. We want to be free to carpe our diem. The choice to experience life’s next adventure means we value access over ownership.

And now we have Instagram and TikTok to put them on full display.

The choice to experience life’s next adventure means we value access over ownership.

 

Social Media: A Stage for Sharing

The rise of social media has manifested a world that markets lifestyle as much as, if not more than, acquiring items. Digital diaries and social scrapbooks that showcase life’s wildest adventures like photographs of sublime destinations, highlight reels, luxury retreats, authentic cuisine, and local boutique shops.

Experiences produce Instagram-worthy content because they favor more engagement than showing off designer shoes. Posts that advertise the action of “living life” generate more coveted attention, likes, comments, and ultimately, connections.

Although, the growth of the experiential economy doesn’t solely rest on our shift in detaching from material things. It also rests on our attachment to others. Studies have found that spending money on experiences brings more lasting joy because experiences are something we can share.

Spending money on experiences brings more lasting joy because experiences are something we can share.

 

Memories are More Valuable Than Material

Everything we experience leaves its mark on our brains. For years, research has shown that, over time, our experiences can change our nervous systems and reshape our minds, literally.

So, our experiences become memories and those memories drive our emotions and those emotions drive our spending habits. As a result, consumers continue to seek out or promote brands, hotels included, that leave a lasting impression. As more research shows, experiential rewards have the highest effectiveness.

That sense of connection leaves us with a feeling that we attach to the memory of each experience. Creating a memory, like discovering a milestone in life, tasting the flavors of another culture, or taking a day off from work to feel pampered, is deemed meaningful to our lives and therefore, worth the value of our dollar.

 

Anticipation vs. the Experience

Because, of course, satisfaction doesn’t only come the moment something is experienced. It comes in the form of anticipation—where the excitement builds prior to the payoff.

Our experiences start long before we actually experience them. When anticipating dinner at a new restaurant, we look ahead at the menu online. Once we book a spa treatment, we can relax our shoulders at the thought of finally feeling better. Planning a couple’s weekend away builds the butterflies of anticipation because we can’t wait to have any other obligation than being together. Scheduling a tee time with old friends leaves us excited and looking forward to 18-holes of friendly competition and catching up.

To a hotel guest, satisfaction is directly connected with the experience. Equally, guest satisfaction is directly connected with business performance. With guests focused on purpose-driven experiences, hoteliers that adapt to offer more experience-focused services will succeed in the changing world. The more personal the experience, the more memorable, which offers more value to a customer. The hotelier’s benefit is loyalty.

Deloitte studies say 39% of guests are likely to spend more on a personalized experience and over 30% more than the average hospitality guest. Great experiences increase guest satisfaction and the likelihood of that customer coming back. 41% will tell friends and family about their experience, which increases revenue, brand loyalty, and generates marketing for a business.

Technology has made it widely popular and easily accessible for properties to offer unique experiences and services. Especially for hoteliers that can capitalize on their own amenities. For example, an online gifting program that offers creative and flexible experiences, providing guests with more value than an impersonal gift card.

Memorable experiences are a catalyst for human connection – something that provides genuine value to today’s guests. We no longer presume material possessions define success. Buying experiences is a purpose-driven chance to connect.

While buying a product might make us happy, initially, an experience elicits more meaning and lasts longer than any material item.

Learn more about GroupSync Gifting>

A Product Story: How Instant Booking became the new standard for transparency in group travel

A Product Story: How Instant Booking became the new standard for transparency in group travel

For years, the process that’s connected group travel planners with the right hotels for an event, meeting or group has relied on the Request for Proposal (RFP) system — a system which was, in large part, developed by hoteliers and catered to their own needs, timing and internal sales processes.

This “old school” way of doing things created friction and inefficiencies that have long been unaddressed, leaving planners shortchanged and facing hours of work to source properties without the information that would help them quickly and easily find the hotels that best match their needs.

While it’s understandable that the hoteliers’ need for a lot of specific information beforehand led to the older, complex RFP process. And to be clear, our flagship product GroupSync includes an RFP process, a process that will continually be needed as I mention further below. It’s one that has evolved to a faster, more efficient way to conduct RFPs – by providing deeper relevancy and a more streamlined process.

But now, advanced technology and new ways of thinking have opened the door to innovating a new solution for hotel sourcing and booking for groups — one that does a better job at bridging the gap between a planner’s need for information to more easily and efficiently source, and the hotel’s desire to simply and easily book the best groups for their property.

This is exactly what we set out to create when building one of the most game-changing features of our GroupSync hotel sourcing solution: Instant Booking. And while you are likely familiar with traditional solutions for direct booking or RFPs, we designed our product to be so much more than that. But before we dive into Instant Booking further, let’s do a quick recap of the more common terminology for group booking processes and their differences.

RFP vs. Direct booking vs. Instant Booking

The RFP

In the group travel business, there’s a decades-long practice of sending a Request for Proposal (RFP) to all the hotels a planner thinks might be a good fit to host their meeting, event, or overnight group stay. They do this, however, without any visibility into room rates or availability at these properties. The planner has no way to know if a hotel falls within budget, or if it has rooms or space to accommodate their group until a response to the RFP is received from the hotel.

Depending on the complexity of the request, this can create a long waiting and proposal process where event organizers find themselves in limbo before knowing which hotels may be able to accommodate their needs. This process becomes even more frustrating when the request is for a simpler, less-complex room block or meeting space booking.

Hoteliers, for their part, receive hundreds (if not thousands) of RFPs every month. They must dedicate resources to reviewing and processing these requests, sifting through the opportunities that fit their property’s inventory, availability, and align with the planners needs from a rate, amenities, and service offering perspective. Unfortunately, the majority of RFPs hoteliers receive do not fit — but they still have to be processed regardless. To Groups360, this felt like a process ready for improvement.

Direct Booking

“Direct booking” describes any room reservation that was made in one instant, online transaction — no RFP waiting period necessary. Direct booking has long been the practice for transient business and when individual group travelers reserve their own rooms. But when it comes to directly booking groups (which hoteliers typically define as a reservation of nine hotel rooms or more), it’s been a challenge to create the same efficiency and move away from the RFP process.

That’s partially because RFPs do have their time and place. While meetings of all size require at least some planning, there is a difference in planning a three-day corporate offsite that requires a dozen sleeping rooms, a meeting room and some snacks, vs. flying 6,000 people to Las Vegas for a week of networking, entertainment and speaking engagements in multiple ballrooms. Those larger events will continue to rely on the RFP process due to the sheer complexity and scale. But until now, planners were spending the same amount of time — an average of 75 days — to source and book both large and small group events.

Instant Booking

Which leads us back to why we created Instant Booking. Instant Booking is the industry’s first ever direct booking option at scale for groups — meaning event organizers can book both hotel room blocks and meeting space in one instant, online transaction. It’s exclusive to our GroupSync sourcing solution, and after spending years helping to develop the feature, I can point to many legitimate reasons why it’s taken hoteliers and planners decades to figure this out. But there were a couple pain points that created our biggest hurdles:

    1. It takes serious industry knowledge, connections and incentives to get the biggest hotel brands on board with changing industry norms. Groups360 was founded by hotel veterans, and our investors include the biggest brand names in hospitality. But it took the combination of all the above, plus an incredible time investment, to bring hospitality’s big players together and agree to make such a deep, permanent change in the way business is done.
    2. We had to find a way to make it work without paid placements in our search results. Kemp Gallineau, Groups360’s CEO and co-founder, was adamant about creating a transparent search platform that avoided pay-for-play placements. Many of the legacy sourcing systems that planners and hoteliers have used until now turn out search results that aren’t based on an event planner’s preferences, but rather, based on properties that have paid to show up in a similar search. Imagine how frustrating it would be if, every time you searched on Google, you had to sift through pages of paid ads that were completely irrelevant to your needs? We’re proud to have created a sourcing solution that generates the most relevant, specific options for organizers as they’re planning their event.

 

What group travel planners can gain from Instant Booking:

The game-changing new ability to instantly secure a room block reservation and the meeting space that they need in one single online transaction.

  • Without GroupSync Instant Booking, planners that need to book more than nine hotel rooms must go through multiple transactions, plus weeks or even months of waiting and back-and-forth with hotels relying on legacy RFPs before booking.

Get smaller meetings off their plate so they can invest more time planning large-scale events.

  • The back-and-forth of the traditional RFP process is too much overhead for smaller, simpler events. We save RFPs for larger more complex meetings that require a lot of collaboration and coordination and make it easy to get the small stuff completed quickly.

Access to an unprecedented level of visibility into hotel inventory and real-time pricing data.

  • Before GroupSync, planners tell us they tend to book with the hotels that they know about already. But our marketplace gives you information about destinations or cities that you might not have considered before, with search results delivered via our unbiased scoring algorithm based on the planner’s needs and priorities. And here’s the bonus: this level of visibility into real-time rates and availability also helps planners send a better, more qualified RFP should they choose to do so. By having the information and search results focus on those hotels that are within budget and have availability, we are creating a more efficient marketplace.

 

What hoteliers gain from Instant Booking:

An automated source of group business, lifting some of the burden to review RFPs so that hotel sales teams with limited bandwidth can focus on booking better-fit, more profitable events.

  • “Lead spam,” or RFP spam, is a real thing for most hotel sales managers. Instant Booking streamlines and automates booking for smaller group business so that there is more time to dedicate toward building planner relationships and ensuring large events run smoothly.

A higher volume of group business that’s streamlined and fills key need dates for a property.

  • With smaller teams on hotel staff and hundreds or thousands of RFPs coming in every month, there’s simply not enough time to address all the requests that hotels receive. This leads to dissatisfaction and poor customer service among one of the most vital customer types — meeting planners. Instant Booking enables a planner to book without having to engage directly with hotel staff, filling up group inventory fast and more efficiently, creating time for hotel sales to focus on providing great service to their clients.

 

It’s all about transparency

For more than 50 years, the older RFP process has been the standard operating model for organizing group meetings and events. It’s created a huge imbalance of information that gives hoteliers leverage over event organizers — but we’re trying to show that transparency actually creates a higher quality experience for the planner, the hotel, and at the end of the day, for the ultimate consumer: the attendee.

In-person meetings and events are back—with some changes

In-person meetings and events are back—with some changes

While a semi-return to normal is welcome after more than two years of a worldwide pandemic, event planners remain divided about the best way to host. In-person? Virtual? A hybrid of the two?

Planners again have the opportunity for in-person business events, with flexibility due to the tech lessons learned along the way. The best course isn’t clear-cut and depends on an organization’s priorities; what’s more, attendees will have their own personal safety concerns.

Planners in the B2B space, specifically, know in-person events and trade shows drive the most conversions. While we’re all eager to see people in person again—without “Sorry, you cut out there for a minute” and “Is it my connection or yours?”—there are COVID safety guidelines to keep your IRL event safe and smooth.

 

Why you might want to meet in person again

First, and most notably, the severity of Omicron is diminishing. While it is still raging in hot spots, fewer cases are severe enough to result in ICU stays.

While there’s still a ways to go, the majority of Americans are vaccinated. As of April 20, 2022, 66% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and 77.4% have received at least one dose.

And since it’s safer to meet in real life now, what’s most notable about considering a return to these events is this: the people want it. A whopping 96% of planners say they will opt for an in-person event in 2022, with only 4% waiting until next year, according to a March 2022 Northstar Meetings Group survey.

Planners’ enthusiasm and optimism is promising for businesses, which see stronger engagement with in-person events that get people out from behind their computers and again interacting with co-workers and associates.

Most companies have money to burn on meeting space and travel, too. American Express’s 2022 Global Meetings and Events Forecast survey found 64% of meeting professionals say their overall meeting budget is increasing this year.

 

How to make it work: in-person event considerations

You’ve got the desire and the cash, so … how do you make it happen? The landscape looks different now, so the event-planning playbook has been revised.

Here’s everything you need to know so your group can meet in person again:

  1. Update your meeting policy: Be specific about your company’s requirements for in-person attendance, health screenings, and safety measures so everyone’s prepared and knows what to expect.
  2. Find a large enough space to accommodate social distancing: Within that updated meeting policy, if 6 feet of social distancing is a priority, remember you’ll need a bigger room that allows for this. Plan your seating arrangement in advance.
  3. Review the fine print of venue contract changes: Some venues have changed their capacity restrictions specifically to accommodate social distancing.
  4. Inspect travel guidelines: Will any event attendees fly in from out of the country? The government has mandated travel restrictions that require anyone traveling into the United States to show COVID-related documentation and contact tracing information, or proof of vaccination. This might also mean a temperature check upon landing. Airlines have policies that require some travelers to show their negative COVID test or even quarantine.
  5. Allow for individualized attendance opt-outs: Some attendees will know early on that an in-person meeting won’t work for them, while others will waver until the last minute. Using a room block management solution like GroupSync Housing makes it easier to manage attendee rooms and preferences.
  6. Follow local governments’ masking restrictions, as well as venue requirements like temperature checks and symptom screening: The rules differ from town to town, so don’t assume the law at home is the same as your destination. And if your event location isn’t set in stone, you might plan it based on the local travel and health restrictions.
  7. Define your emergency course of action: Fingers crossed, you won’t need this —- but decide exactly what will happen if someone develops symptoms or tests positive for COVID at the event. Who does that individual need to contact first, and what steps will you follow to keep everyone safe?

 

The cons of virtual events

As you see, there are new considerations for planning an in-person event in 2022. Don’t let these changes force you into continuing to host virtual events, though.

Sure, there are pros to hosting online events: they’re environmentally friendly, and your group has likely grown comfortable with the technology. Yet the cons do include two big hurdles that in-person events can clear:

Engagement

Digital fatigue = all-around fatigue. People have grown tired of attending meeting after meeting from behind a screen. Sometimes, admittedly, their attention moves to something else in another browser window.

To combat this, organizations are incorporating wellness activities, meal delivery, entertainment, games, and more special offerings to keep attendees interested — all of which add more to the overall budget.

Cost

There’s a slight difference in cost for in-person vs. virtual or hybrid events, but there’s a difference nonetheless. Depending on your event’s size, it adds up.

According to American Express’s 2022 Global Meetings and Events Forecast: “The cost per attendee per day for in-person meetings ranges from a low of $484 for small and simple meetings to a high of $851 for incentives and special events (in U.S. dollars). For virtual and hybrid meetings, the cost per attendee per day ranges from $501 for small and simple meetings to $776 for incentives and special events.”

 

So, is virtual event planning a thing of the past?

In a word, no. Worldwide, the virtual events market is forecast to reach $504.76 billion by 2028 according to a 2021 Research and Markets report, so virtual and hybrid events are firmly here to stay.

For one, they’re more inclusive for people of different capabilities or family roles, for whom travel can be challenging.

Second, and perhaps most obviously, tech makes it possible. What started as a pandemic stop-gap has turned into a bonafide win for companies wanting to collaborate on big ideas in a shared space.

 

Next steps

These new considerations for in-person event planning will become old hat in no time, so if you’ve missed gladhanding, you can definitely make it happen.

Plus, GroupSync makes planning today’s live events easy, even with COVID safety guidelines. Source available meeting spaces based on size, get faster hotel RFP proposal responses, and even book your event — all in one place.

Finding profits and productivity in the new era of group travel

Finding profits and productivity in the new era of group travel

Hoteliers continue to optimize in the face of inconsistent travel regulations that limit business opportunities and force staff to do more with less. While in the UK we are getting back to pre-pandemic routines, we still have a long way to go. Hoteliers must get creative in order to hold on to loyal customers and generate revenue.

Group travel has long been the security blanket that provides stable, predictable business for hotels; but a world affected by the pandemic is different. There is only so much that hoteliers can do to stimulate cross-border travel, and with the inevitable rise of home working on the domestic front, there remains a substantial psychological impact on travel. To win business, companies need to find new pockets of demand.

Luckily, Groups360 is now able to identify two key strategies that help hoteliers maintain a healthy business as they ride out the waves of change – and more importantly, minimize the risk of getting left behind.

Rethinking ways to create stability

People have felt deprived of the world as they know it for more than two years. Today there is a pent-up appetite not only for travel, but also experiences. Wise hoteliers can invest in their property’s longevity by devising a plan to invite people back out of their homes and into hotels. Creatively marketing food and beverage services and spa services is a simple way to monetize a hotel’s resources outside of room bookings.

While one may assume that revamping a property’s marketing is the last thing that already busy teams need, there is good news. Equipped with the proper tools, hoteliers can easily add up to 25% to their bottom line with little additional effort.

Innovative platforms such as GroupSync Gifting have already shaped new ways for early adopters to create an instant, stable revenue stream, by selling vouchers, food and beverage services, amenities and even wedding packages to corporate and leisure guests through a hotel-branded website that is easy to create.

Businesses learned quickly how to do more with less during the pandemic: fewer resources and less staff, to name but a few changes. Now the industry is evolving using technology that helps businesses do more with less, and do it better.

It’s time to get closer to customers

Customer loyalty information is a powerful tool for hotels. It empowers direct communication with a guest from the moment they book, up until arrival. But for valuable segments such as group travel, hoteliers are given limited access to any information about the individuals staying at their property. Instead, it resides on a planner’s rooming list until a point much closer to the guests’ arrival.

Evolving this planner-hotelier relationship to increase transparency will be a massive area of innovation in the industry. It helps to know that the next generation of meeting planners—those who hold the future of the meeting and events industry in their hands—have a basic expectation that the businesses they work with will use simple technology that streamlines their work.

hotel-occupancy

Booking a group trip can be stress-free with features like viewing hotel occupancy rates ahead of time.

Traditionally, it could take up to three days to create a booking link for an event. Using GroupSync Housing, creating an event-branded microsite to share with planners and attendees takes only minutes. Most importantly, the tool gathers essential attendee information that hoteliers can use to capture shoulder night demand, market directly to attendees and monetize amenities.

The world is emerging from the pandemic with a fresh pair of eyes, driven by an urge to challenge the status quo and adopt better ways of living. The hotelier industry is no exception—and the businesses that begin innovating today will experience gains in productivity and profits in the long run. There has never been a better time to evolve.

Originally published in Hotel Management International. This blog has been slightly modified for a digital audience.

How Omni’s instant group booking announcement is breaking new ground in hospitality

How Omni’s instant group booking announcement is breaking new ground in hospitality

There’s a rule of thumb in event planning that says the best time to source is when hotels want to sell.

While this may sound obvious, most group travel planners find this advice far from easy to follow. A lack of easily accessible property information pertaining to groups, including rates and availability, makes it challenging for planners to determine where they should focus their sourcing time and effort – and even then, legacy RFP processes create literally months of work for both group travel planners and hoteliers who simply need to identify the perfect hotel to work with.

These and many other pain points are the reason why we do what we do. At its core, our mission is to make booking groups less complicated – and Instant Booking is just one piece of that strategy. Group travel planners can now book guest room blocks or meeting space in one instant, online transaction on GroupSync. The capability is available at nearly 7,000 properties worldwide, with an additional 20,000 properties expected to begin offering Instant Booking within the next year.

And our expansion doesn’t stop there. Today, Omni Hotels & Resorts became the first brand ever to offer GroupSync Instant Booking for both group rooms and meeting space. The move breaks new ground in the business of group travel, and Omni’s rollout serves as a roadmap for more hoteliers to drive innovation

Breaking new ground in group booking

Starting with the Omni Frisco Hotel in Frisco, Texas, the capability to book rooms and space instantly is an industry first that will become available at more than 50 Omni properties in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Searching, sourcing and booking groups at Omni properties will be as simple as any other online shopping you do today.

“This technology provides an on-demand booking option for planners who seek to book a small room block and meeting space with ease and confidence,” said Peter Palli, chief commercial officer for Omni Hotels & Resorts. “We take great pride in being leaders and innovators in the meetings and events industry, so we were eager to explore the opportunity to adopt paradigm-shifting technology destined to change the way hotels have been booking groups.”

One of the unfortunate realities of event planning has always been that sourcing venues for a small group usually takes just as long as it would for a large event. Seasoned group travel organizers know that if a hotel is stuck using the traditional RFP process, it won’t matter if they’re planning a 15-person corporate offsite or coordinating a group of 500 that needs a hotel banquet room – legacy RFP processing means sourcing takes time, a long time. (An average of 75 days from start to RFP award date.)

It’s also true that hotel sales managers, who are motivated by quarterly closings and sales goals, are more driven to close with planners who can sign within a short timeline in order to meet those goals. GroupSync Instant Booking provides a win-win for both parties: planners drastically reduce the time they spend sourcing – often by 60 days or more – and hoteliers can easily fill booking windows without the sales effort by selling them online, 24/7 via Instant Booking.

“Omni’s innovation will significantly benefit its staff and their customers by automating group bookings, allowing more time to focus on those things that create a great experience,” said Kemp Gallineau, CEO of Groups360.

Learn more about GroupSync Instant Booking and its role in transforming group travel:

The time is now for direct, instant booking for groups

Over a Million Guest Rooms available for Instant Group Booking on GroupSync

Learn more about GroupSync Instant Booking